Wesley Clark and war crimes

[LeftCoast]

Ok...first off I'd like to ask for a NO FLAMES thread here if possible.

Many folks on DU are very much in favor of a Clark run for the Presidency, but I've been seeing some info that Clark is wanted for war crimes.

Could someone please let me know what's going on here? I support Dean, but I like much of what I hear about Clark. This war-crimes thing has me really bothered though.

Here's a sample link of what I'm talking about:

http://www.zpub.com/un/wanted1.html

[Randi_Listener]

1. Bill Clinton Meets The Shrinks

Another fine section of this website. Looks like a dogshit site to me. A hatchet job on a qualified presidential candidate by a freeper-esque website.

[LeftCoast]

2. That site is just one example

I did a quick 5 second google search and came up with that among many other choices.

[DealsGapRider]

28. Hahaha

Awesome pic! I love this site! I just joined and can't get enough!

[Julien Sorel]

3. Is this post a joke?

[Randi_Listener]

4. I think so.

n/t

[59millionmorons]

5. OH STOP

This is something a whacky Newsmax writer put out a few years ago. Maybe the signature would have given you a clue.



DIRECTOR
BUREAU OF INTIMIDATION
DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE

[Wendec]

6. No War Crimes

I'm sure there is a lot of information on this topic, but hopefully the following, but hopefully the following excerpt from a June 3,2000 article in the Washington Post Foreign Service is adequate:

--------------------------------
PARIS, June 2, 2000 –– President Clinton and other NATO leaders will not be investigated by the United Nations on charges that they committed genocide and other war crimes during the 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, told the Security Council today that her office had concluded an 11-month assessment of charges that NATO forces committed crimes against Serbian civilians and had decided not to open a formal investigation.

"Although some mistakes were made by NATO, I am very satisfied that there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or unlawful military targets by NATO during the bombing campaign," she said.

-----------------------

[LeftCoast]

13. Thanks Wendec

This must be what started the whole thing...

[LoneStarLiberal]

7. It's Probably Not A Joke

As we are seeing now, when wars are fought bad things happen. I've been reading news and opinion pieces out of Serbia over the last three plus years that advocate charging General Clark who, as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo campaign, had ultimate command responsibility for the deaths of civlians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure during the bombing campaign against Serbia.

While I will only say that I think the basis for such charges is negligible (as in they haven't been filed three plus years after the campaign ended) and that if more people understood that shit happens in war we wouldn't go to war, I do believe that this line of attack is open against General Clark.

And we all know our Republican friends will jump to it as soon as he announces (if he announces). I also feel that he realizes this will be an issue and if he announces he will have some very specific answers to questions regarding alleged war crimes.

Edit: Wendec's post is a good official bit of news. Given that official news never stopped a good smear campaign, I think allegations of war crimes will still be an issue.

[59millionmorons]

9. GOP wont touch this

Have you heard about Iraq and the 1000's of innoncent woman and children killed? Case closed. NEXT attack on Clark please.

[LoneStarLiberal]

12. Won't Matter, Unfortunately

Just like their ability to blinker everything else in their universe, the Kosovo campaign took place while the Doer Of All Evil, President Clinton, was in office. That fact alone and Republican control of the major media will allow them to dredge up images of shattered Serbian bridges, dead Chinese diplomats, dead Serb civilians, and at the same time breathlessly and spinelessly justify the far greater slaughter of Afghani and Iraqi cilivians "because of the wicked attacks on September 11" or some such arrogant bullshit.

I don't think it has any legitimacy or any hopes of running, but that's not the point of employing tactics like this: The point is to throw so much crap out there that the General's campaign would have to spend all their time rebutting it instead of talking issues. If any of it sticks, then you run with that.

It's basic cross-examination debate tactics. We called it "shotgunning." Throw out shit and run with what sticks. Legitimacy is no concern.

[G_j]

11. the bombing is certainly

portrayed in a very negative light by Micheal Moore in 'Bowling for Columbine'.

I remember being very disturbed by the bombing at the time and calling the WH about it.

[Wendec]

14. Agreed

not a political rebuttal. I was assuming that people on here would be more interested in a factual response, but I fully agree that this will be an issue. I'm not sure whether to add "fortunately" here, but the reality is that a large number of Americans don't even know we were engaged in Kosovo, and some of them probably think bombing the Chinese Embassy was a good thing!

[Pepperbelly]

24. the biggest flaw in these smears is

the process followed by NATO in their targeting. ANY NATO nation had the right to veto any particular target so the targets that were selected were the product of NATO and not any single individual.

The issues surrounding the 'civilian' radio station are clouded at best. Whether it was intentional or not has not beene determined and there is plenty of info out there that if it was deliberate, there were many reasons to do exactly that.

Which is true? I do not know nor does anyone on this board OR anyone in Serbia.

[w13rd0]

8. Doesn't anyone consider it odd...

...that anytime a Democratic candidate raises his head above water, some scythe swings by to try and lop it off. Hell, this guy isn't even a Democratic candidate (yet), and we can expect all candidates (potential and actual) to get this kind of treatment. It's a proven strategy for the GOP. Being inclusive, being "big tent", means we welcome those who often have no other purpose than to do us harm. I think we can be inclusive without being stupid though...

[Gabriele-d]

15. War crimes

Here is a response found following the "here" link on the bottom of that awful site:


"I have seldom seen a website, or a series of posters, less in touch with reality than this. Having seen it on the ground, I am forced to the conclusion that the sponser(s) of this site are either typical western sociopaths whose only agenda is disruption and distruction, or perhaps others who decline to reveal their agenda. Have you noticed that they conceal thier identifying information, and that an email to them invariably bounces? When you've been where I/ve been, you might have a right to an opinion."

Gabriele D.

[newyawker99]

27. Hi Gabriele-d!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[meegbear]

10. Did you see the signature?

Besides the bitter rants, the signature reads:

DIRECTOR
BUREAU OF INTIMIDATION
DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE

Nuf sed.

[jfkennedy]

16. All wars are crimes

In our modern day all wars are crimes. It seems to me that Wesley Clark has done some soul searching about Wars and its impact on making the world more free, and has decided that the world needs to be more open and tolerant and less likely to go to war to solve problems.

That’s what I am hearing him say now, and if you look at that idea it is truly revolutionary and can only bring about peace in the world if he can enforce it as president.

It's a subtle way of him saying that non-violent principles and actions, and tactics can stop conflicts and wars and bring peace in the world rather then starting a war to bring peace.

Nonviolent principles is not something that happened 50 or 60 years ago with some guy named Gandhi and was forgotten. Most in the military such as Generals have to research non-violent tactics to resolve conflicts or we would of all by now been nuked off the map by now.

[terryg11]

18. good response

"all wars are crimes"

exactly. ANyone participating in a war with shooting, bombings and killings could very easily be sought for war crimes.

[jfkennedy]

20. Wars were outlawed in 1928

Honor the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war. This 1928 treaty, which was signed by the United States and every other nation, pledges nations to resolve conflicts only by pacific means.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/kbpact.htm

[Tinoire]

17. War Crimes

This site also has lots of information but I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing since I'm at work:

Long article with links/sources here that I'd recommend you use as a base from which to research. Also covers Waco.
http://www.brasscheck.com/yugoslavia/clarkatwaco.html

When possible, check the old DU archives. Many of us were aware of what was going on in Kosovo and denouncing it. If Clark does run, there's going to be a lot of nasty information being exposed by both the left and the right. A lot of leftists protested against what was going on there. International Action Center led quite a few marches to include at least one on DC.

----------------------------------------------------------


Veterans for Peace of whom DUers are so enamoured for speaking out against Bush, spoke out loudly against the War Crimes taking place during our war against Yugoslavia.


Humanitarian Intervention?
By Jim Burkholder, Past-President, Veterans for Peace

<snip>

We and our principal allies in the EC avoided bringing the UN into the negotiations with Yugoslavia prior to our military campaign because we knew that humanitarian means would be invoked to solve the conflict. We and our allies were intent on imposing our military prowess over Yugoslavia to the extent that we were willing to profane the defensive mission of NATO by using its aircraft to destroy the cultural, economic, and industrial infrastructure of a nation with whom we were not at war.

Webster defines the adjective humanitarian as helping humanity, and the noun intervention as interference of one state in the affairs of another. War with all of its violence and destruction can never qualify as humanitarian and it is a very obtrusive interference in someone else’s affairs. The actions of the US and its allies culmination in the seventy eight days of bombing Kosovo and Serbia could, and should, instead be recognized as war crimes against humanity, as has been alleged from many sources.

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/interstatement.htm

Veterans for Peace statement on Kosovo (Excerpt thereof)

Adopted by the Board of Directors Meeting in Washington, D.C.,April 10, 1999

Veterans for Peace (VFP) is appalled by the violence, bombing, killing,and ethnic cleansing now going on in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia and in the province of Kosovo. We condemn both the NATO bombing campaign and the murderous campaign of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his military in Kosovo. We are deeply concerned over the resultant refugee crisis and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars, the widespread suffering engendered thereby, and the potential for destabilization in Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, and beyond.

http://www.gsoa.ch/zivil/kosov@/kosov@_nato/199905/19990503.0.html

------------

The bombing of Yugoslavia, which is a result of Albright’s diplomatic intransigence:-

1. is killing and maiming more and more innocent civilians every day (over 1000 dead so far);

2. has made repression in Yugoslavia and the refugee crisis much worse, not stopped it;

3. is a blatant violation of international law and the US constitution;

4. threatens to ignite a much larger war, with growing NATO antagonism towards Russia & China;

5. is blatantly hypocritical in the light of ongoing repression practised by US allies like Turkey;

6. is using illegal weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction, such as cluster bombs, mines and Depleted Uranium Bullets which leave behind a cancerous legacy of radioactive waste;

7. is an immoral waste of our tax revenues while here in the US, one in five children live in poverty and whole families are living on the streets.

Tucson Peace Action Coalition member groups Students Against Sweatshops, Pueblo por la Paz, Veterans for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, The Nuclear Resister, Raytheon Peacemakers, and Jobs with Justice join their voices to demand:

http://www.iacenter.org/albrt_ua.htm

[Zuni]

19. This is put out by Milosevic's laywer, Ramsey Clark

Ramsey Clark does extensive legal work for war criminals, including milosevic and heads up the International Action Center, which is Part of ANSWER.(Ramsey Clark is a real scumbag--he has hung out with some of the most vile dictators and war criminals--he has defended Nazi Concentration Camp Guards in the 1980s, Hutu Genocide suspects in the 1990s, Lyndon Larouche, has hungb out with war criminals and dictators from Quaddafi, the Ayatollah, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein (who he described as a brave man on C-Span)and many, many others)
That is one reason why these stalinist groups put out the propaganda they do.

NATO did not commit any intentional war crimes--of course there were civilian casualties, but they were nothing like the mass rape and destruction left behind by the Serbs.

[Tinoire]

22. I'm sorry Zuni - What a smear!

That's a nice bit of smear you just did there. You should consider posting some reputable links to all that information you just tossed out. I was in Military Intel at the time and the truth about our war against Yugoslavia was brilliantly hidden from the American people.

Veterans for Peace is no Stalinist group.

Neither is the First Amendment Defense Trust which runs Brasscheck.

Ramsey Clark and the International Action Center speak for themselves.

--------------------------------------------
<snip>

Born to power - Clark's father was attorney general in the 1940s and later a Supreme Court justice - the University of Chicago Law School graduate was appointed assistant attorney general by John F. Kennedy in 1961 and went on to head that department as attorney general under Lyndon Johnson from 1967 to 1969. During his years in the Justice Department, Clark was a staunch supporter of the civil-rights movement. While in charge of government efforts to protect the protesters in Alabama, he witnessed firsthand "the enormous violence that was latent in our society toward unpopular people." He had a similar experience when he was sent to Los Angeles after the rioting in Watts and discovered abuses by the police and the National Guard.

Although back then, Clark didn't take the strong antiwar stance he advocates today, his Justice Department record boasts some major accomplishments: He supervised the drafting and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. He denounced police shootings and authorized prosecution of police on charges of brutality and wrongful death. He opposed electronic surveillance and refused to authorize an FBI wiretap on Martin Luther King Jr. He fought hard against the death penalty and won, putting a stay on federal executions that lasted until this year, when Timothy McVeigh's death sentence was carried out.

<snip>

Clark is founder and chairperson of the International Action Center, the largest antiwar movement in the United States. A vocal critic of U.S. military actions around the globe, he calls government officials "international outlaws," accusing them of "killing innocent people because we don't like their leader." He has traveled to Iraq, North Vietnam, Serbia, and other embattled regions of the world to investigate the effects of American bombing and economic sanctions there. The sanctions, he says, are particularly inhumane: "They're like the neutron bomb, which is the most 'inspired' of all weapons, because it kills the people and preserves the property, the wealth. So you get the wealth and you don't have the baggage of the hungry, clamoring poor."

After the Gulf War, in 1991, Clark initiated a war-crimes tribunal, which tried and found guilty President George Bush and Generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, among others. Clark went on to write a book, The Fire This Time (Thunder's Mouth Press), describing the crimes he says were committed by U.S. and NATO forces during the Gulf War. When asked why he focuses on the crimes of his own country, instead of those committed by Iraq, Clark says that we, as citizens, need to announce our principles and "force our government to adhere to them. When you see your government violating those principles, you have the highest obligation to correct what your government does, not point the finger at someone else."

<snip>

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/bully.html

[MaverickX]

21. Lets put it this way...

The Serbs deserved to have bombs dropped on them. They mass slaughteed Albanians and wouldn't stop even when UN peacekeepers were there. The only people that accuse Clark of war crimes are tyrants that want leeway to butcher people and Pat Buchanan.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

25. You Are 100% Right

I follow politics pretty closely and the two biggest critics of our Bonia and Kosovo policies were Rush Limbaugh and Michael "Savaged" Weiner.


Fuck all of Wes Clark's critics. They are not fit to carry his briefcase.

[11cents]

26. Ramsay Clark has been the pathetic handpuppet ...

... of a political cult for decades now. It really is ridiculous to keep invoking his name as if it has some cachet, just because he was Attorney General almost 40 years ago. He himself has been an apologist for war criminal after war criminal. If Milosevic isn't bad enough for you, how about the Rwandan genocidists?

>After the Gulf War, in 1991, Clark initiated a war-crimes tribunal,
>which tried and found guilty President George Bush and Generals Colin
>Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf, among others.

This is so typical of the delusional grandiosity that just spells "totalitarian cult." Thank God Ramsay Clark initiated that war crimes tribunal that found those guys guilty, after a fair trial! Now they're all in jail, where they belong.

[iluvchicago86]

29. My family deserved the bombing?

My friends deserved it? I'm sorry but when I read your post I was quite surprised that a Democrat could in good conscience write such an awful and hateful thing. Because saying "The Serbs" deserve this is indentical to the right wing talking point that "Iraq" deserves to be bombed for the wrong doing of it's leader. Saying that a civilian populace deserves to be punished for the crimes of it's leaders makes zero sense. As far as I know, Slobodan is still alive, as is Hussein. Our country needs to stop this insane habit of bombing countries to smithereens in order to get a point across( or have a war serve as a distraction from domestic and personal problems as well as profitting from the deaths of civilians , but whatever).
Peace!

[Pepperbelly]

23. I have been through these sites and

for the most part, it is hyperventilating, hysterical smears based on no specifics and linked to no crimes.

Remember this, these charges are based on what the Serbs claimed and there are many pro-Serb blogs and in the final analysis, these sorts of charges almost always change according to whose ox is being gored. I guarantee that the people in Kosovo have an entirely different view of the matter.


It is bullshit.